David J. Griffiths
Griffiths in 2014
Born	David Jeffrey Griffiths (1942-12-05)5 December 1942 (age 83) Arlington, Virginia, United States
Alma mater	Harvard University
Known for	Undergraduate textbooks
Scientific career
Fields	Particle physics Electromagnetism
Institutions	Reed College
Thesis	Covariant Approach to Massless Field Theory in the Radiation Gauge (1970)
Doctoral advisor	Sidney Coleman
Signature

David Jeffrey Griffiths (born December 5, 1942) is an Americanphysicist and educator. He was on the faculty ofReed College from 1978 through 2009, becoming theHoward Vollum Professor of Science before his retirement. He wrote four highly regarded textbooks forundergraduate physics students.

Griffiths was born inArlington, Virginia, the son of Winifred Mary (née Jeffrey) and Gordon Griffiths.^[1][2] Both his parents were faculty members at theUniversity of Washington, his father in the history department^[3] and his mother in the zoology department.^[2]

Griffiths is a graduate ofThe Putney School and was trained atHarvard University (B.A., 1964;M.A., 1966;Ph.D., 1970). His doctoral work,Covariant Approach to Massless Field Theory in the Radiation Gauge on theoreticalparticle physics,^[4] was supervised bySidney Coleman.

Griffiths is principally known as the author of three highly regarded textbooks forundergraduate physics students:Introduction to Elementary Particles (published in 1987, second edition published 2008),Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (published in 1995, third edition published 2018), andIntroduction to Electrodynamics (published in 1981, fifth edition published in 2023).

Griffiths was the recipient of the 1997Robert A. Millikan Award reserved for "those who have made outstanding scholarly contributions to physics education".^[5][6]

In 2009 Griffiths was named a Fellow of theAmerican Physical Society, cited "For advancing the upper level physics curriculum through the writing of leading textbooks and through his contributions to theAmerican Journal of Physics in many editorial roles and as an author."^[7]

• Griffiths, David J. (2023).Introduction to Electrodynamics (5th ed.).Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1017/9781009397735.ISBN 978-1-009-39775-9.
• Griffiths, David J.; Schroeter, Darrell F. (2018).Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (3rd ed.).Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1-107-18963-8.
• Griffiths, David (December 10, 2020).Introduction to Elementary Particles. John Wiley & Sons.ISBN 978-3-527-83464-8.
• Griffiths, David J. (2012).Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Physics.Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1-107-60217-5.^[8]

The most recent edition of each book is generally regarded as a standard undergraduate text.^[9]

• List of textbooks in electromagnetism
• List of textbooks on classical mechanics and quantum mechanics

• Griffiths's web page
• Emeritus Professor of Physics, Physics Department, Reed College
• AIP Oral History Interview
• Lecture: The charge distribution on a conductor
• "Stunningly clear ... could teach physics to gerbils." (p.1)(p.2)(p.3)(p.4)
• David Griffiths at theMathematics Genealogy Project
• David Griffiths Lecture, Techfest 2012, IIT Bombay – YouTube

• 1942 births
• 21st-century American physicists
• Fellows of the American Physical Society
• Harvard University alumni
• Living people
• American particle physicists
• Physics educators
• Reed College faculty
• The Putney School alumni
• American textbook writers

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from April 2022
• Biography with signature
• Articles with hCards